The 2014 revision of The CarbonNeutral Protocol introduced Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) as an alternative way to demonstrate achievement of Steps 1 and 2 of the CarbonNeutral® certification process for products. Step 1 covers the definition of the subject and Step 2 covers measurement of the subject’s GHG emissions.
An EPD is a type III environmental label declaring the environmental impacts of a product over its expected life. EPDs can be thought of as the environmental equivalent to nutrition labels for food products, stating a product’s carbon footprint and other environmental impacts such as resource depletion, acidification, and eutrophication. It is a comprehensive, voluntary, internationally recognised report that compiles and standardises technical LCA information, eliminating the need to contend with numerous individual documents.
Figure 6 demonstrates how the integrity of EPDs is established by the application of a variety of third- party standards and processes:
Figure 6: Establishing the Integrity of EPDs
Given the rigour applied to the development of PCRs, the strict requirements of ISO LCA methodologies and the need for independent third-party verification, The CarbonNeutral Protocol recognises that EPDs provide robust, high quality GHG measurement outputs.
There may be minor differences in requirements of The CarbonNeutral Protocol relative to an EPD. EPD product category rules for any given subject will by definition be more relevant to the subject than the general requirements of The CarbonNeutral product certification. Therefore, where there are differences, the EPD prevails and is deemed to have met the requirements of The CarbonNeutral Protocol. Table 15 explores some of these requirements in more detail.
Table 15: Comparison of Requirements Between The CarbonNeutral Protocol and EPDs for CarbonNeutral® Product Certification
Requirements for a CarbonNeutral® compliant EPD
Figure 7: Determining if GHG Emissions Assessments Meet the Requirements of The CarbonNeutral Protocol